System and method for automated contact qualification

ABSTRACT

Contact lead quality is determined and presented to guide selection of contact leads for a predetermined activity, such as sales of a product, service or solution. A lead generation engine interfaces with a lead qualification module, an enterprise historical database and a lead confirmation tool to selectively analyze the lead information and qualification information to develop an ordered contact list for multiple contact leads, the ordered list ranking contact lead quality in multiple quality categories. A contact lead qualification graphical user interface presents multiple lead quality category ratings and values for a contact lead with each lead quality category indicative of a contact lead characteristic. These leads are then deemed relevant to sales and can be input in an organization&#39;s customer relationship management tool.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 12/494,482,filed Jun. 30, 2009 now U.S. Pat. No. 8,200,524, entitled “System AndMethod For Automated Contact Qualification” naming Victor-Hugo Narvaezand Heather Burnett as inventors, and which is hereby incorporated byreference in its entirety.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates in general to the field of sales andmarketing through information handling system and other contact media,and more particularly to a system and method for automated contactqualification for pursuing sales revenue.

2. Description of the Related Art

As the value and use of information continues to increase, individualsand businesses seek additional ways to process and store information.One option available to users is information handling systems. Aninformation handling system generally processes, compiles, stores,and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or otherpurposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of theinformation. Because technology and information handling needs andrequirements vary between different users or applications, informationhandling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled,how the information is handled, how much information is processed,stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the informationmay be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in informationhandling systems allow for information handling systems to be general orconfigured for a specific user or specific use such as financialtransaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage,or global communications. In addition, information handling systems mayinclude a variety of hardware and software components that may beconfigured to process, store, and communicate information and mayinclude one or more computer systems, data storage systems, andnetworking systems.

Information handling systems help enterprises improve productivity byallowing enterprise employees to do more with fewer resources. Forexample, enterprises attempt to improve the productivity of salespersonsby identifying contacts for sales calls that result in more sales permarketing campaign or initiative, where a contact or a lead can bedefined as a qualified lead that is ready to be delivered to a salesforce to pursue sales revenue. Two problems that often arise withattempts to identify and qualify contacts for salespersons to engage arethat the enterprise's sales force is understaffed relative to the numberof generated leads and relative to the amount of pre-sales activity thatoccurs to vet and qualify a contact, and that the sales force lacksconfidence in the credibility of the contacts as qualified leads,especially compared with existing customers that a sales person alreadyknows to contact. In some instances, a line of business (LOB) having aproduct or product group to market and sell will have goals that differfrom the goals of the sales force. For example, a marketing team mightdesire to find and nurture new customers and potential customers from ademographic with which the sales force is unfamiliar. In order to drivethe sales force to target a desired demographic or other customerconstraint, an enterprise must build credibility in the contacts givento the sales force through successful contact identification andqualification.

Often, a sales force is pulled in multiple directions to sell a varietyof products with little in the way of guidance for priorities betweendifferent products and for different target customers. In some productmarkets, technologically complex products require specialized salesforce knowledge in order to sell products to technologically savvycustomers or to technologically uneducated customers who needwhite-glove treatment with regard to product explanation in order toclose the sale. The job of the sales force is made more difficult asproducts periodically evolve or extend into a new customer base.Contacting and nurturing new customers to purchase expensive and complexproducts takes time and patience, often with the added expense to thesales person of lost sales to known customers for known products. As aresult, a high demand is put on an enterprise sales force thatcomplicates understaffing problems and the inability to drive multiplebut necessary programs that are aimed at increasing sales.

Conventional sales techniques often involve a face-to-face meeting orwebcast event by a marketing team to present a product or servicefollowed by sales calls to all opt-in attendee contacts. However, salesforce engagement to contacts based on a one-time marketing presentationtypically results in sub-optimal contacts, thus reinforcing sales forcebias against working in cooperation with marketing teams. Over the shortterm, sales efforts focused on developing and retaining existingaccounts typically provides better results for a sales force than doesdevelopment of new customers, however, development of new customersoften is in the best interest of the enterprise as a whole. Collectiveaction between marketing and sales teams tends to leveragedatabase-driven marketing initiatives and provides better support forpre-sales activities than a sales team is generally able to do in atime-effective manner when working without marketing. Nurturing andqualifying potential customers for an enterprise by using concretecustomer insights helps make sales and marketing activities moreefficient and gives rise to new revenue streams through better cadenceand credibility in the lead generation and qualification process.However, selecting, organizing, analyzing and presenting customerinformation in a manner that is readily understood by both marketingteams and sales teams presents a challenge.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Therefore a need has arisen for a system and method that automatescontact qualifications, including evaluations, in a coordinatedresponse.

In accordance with the present invention, a system and method areprovided that substantially reduce the disadvantages and problemsassociated with previous methods and systems for contact qualifications.Contact generation identifies information about a person's role as adecision maker with regard to purchases, which is confirmed by outreachto further determine the quality of a contact and whether it is ready todelivered to the sales force. Contacts are based on information qualitythat is based on multiple quality characteristics that support acontact's quality and likelihood of contact success.

More specifically, a lead generation engine generates contactinformation associated with people to contact for a predeterminedpurpose, such as for selling a selected product or service. A leadqualification module performs person-to-person outreach to selectedcontact information to investigate lead quality, such as with outboundtelephone outreach by telemarketing agents. A lead confirmation toolanalyzes the lead information and quality information to define qualityvalues in multiple lead quality categories that indicate characteristicsof a lead contact. A contact lead qualification graphical user interfacepresents the multiple lead quality categories along with associated leadinformation to provide critical contact information to a sales person.The contact information allows adequate preparation for an initial salesengagement with the contact, and provides confidence in credibility fora contact so as to promote greater opportunity to accomplish a salesobjective, such as a sale of a product or service.

The present invention provides a number of important technicaladvantages. One example of an important technical advantage is thatcontact qualifications are managed with a coordinated response. Customerinformation is organized, analyzed and presented in a manner that isreadily understandable by marketing teams and sales teams. A graphicaluser interface outputs a summary of a lead qualification to provideenhanced insight to that lead's product needs to prepare for a salespresentation to the lead that addresses the lead's specific needs and toprovide lead credibility. The selection of leads to contact enhances theefficiency of a sales force to best direct sales toward achievingenterprise goals versus short term sales goals. The availability of acontact's self-declared problems and needs helps to ensure that acomplete and educated conversation follows a contact and encompasses allproducts that might be of interest to the contact. Qualified leadcontacts lead to better contact results that help engender confidence inthe qualification process and system so that enterprise goals moreclosely align with sales team goals.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The present invention may be better understood, and its numerousobjects, features and advantages made apparent to those skilled in theart by referencing the accompanying drawings. The use of the samereference number throughout the several figures designates a like orsimilar element.

FIG. 1 depicts a block diagram of a system that automates contact leadqualification in a coordinated response;

FIG. 2 depicts a flow diagram of a process for multiple contact leadinformation sources going through the lead generation engine;

FIG. 3 depict a flow diagram of a process for a contact lead to befurther qualified in a lead qualification module to generate a report,such as with information from an historical enterprise database;

FIG. 4 depicts a flow diagram of a process for contact leadqualification to undergo validation of characteristics by comparing thedata with an enterprise historical database;

FIG. 5 depicts a flow diagram of a process for creating a contact leadprofile presentation via a Lead Confirmation Tool;

FIG. 6 depicts a contact lead qualification graphical user interface;and

FIG. 7 depicts a supplemental process flow regarding the relevance ofthe lead to a sales force and further qualifies the lead's salesreadiness quality.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Contact lead qualification improves enterprise marketing and salescooperation for effectively presenting products to customers. Forpurposes of this disclosure, an information handling system may includeany instrumentality or aggregate of instrumentalities operable tocompute, classify, process, transmit, receive, retrieve, originate,switch, store, display, manifest, detect, record, reproduce, handle, orutilize any form of information, intelligence, or data for business,scientific, control, or other purposes. For example, an informationhandling system may be a personal computer, a network storage device, orany other suitable device and may vary in size, shape, performance,functionality, and price. The information handling system may includerandom access memory (RAM), one or more processing resources such as acentral processing unit (CPU) or hardware or software control logic,ROM, and/or other types of nonvolatile memory. Additional components ofthe information handling system may include one or more disk drives, oneor more network ports for communicating with external devices as well asvarious input and output (I/O) devices, such as a keyboard, a mouse, anda video display. The information handling system may also include one ormore buses operable to transmit communications between the varioushardware components.

Referring now to FIG. 1, a block diagram depicts a system for contactlead qualification. A lead enters the marketing program and proceedsthrough a lead nurturing model for collecting a contact list havingmultiple contacts associated with a product or service. A leadgeneration engine 18 obtains lead information from one or more sourcesregarding multiple contact leads. For example, lead generation engine 18receives lead information from an enterprise marketing database 12, frommarketing vendors 14 and/or from organic contacts 16, such asinformation indicating that a contact 16 has an interest in a product orservice sold by the enterprise and has found the source of the leadgeneration engine web site on its own volition. In a lead generationprogram, the process continues for third party vendors to leverage thecontact list and to drive other contact traffic to landing zone websites for marketing the product or service in question. Lead generationengine 18 tracks and nurtures the lead information, such as by type ofproduct or by contact identity, and provides the lead information to alead qualification module 20. Online nurturing steps are taken for allcontacts by, for example, providing educational or instructionalinformation about the product, service or solution and assigning a valueto the contact's behaviors and self-declared status as a viable decisionmaker, among other criteria. The lead qualification module 20selectively investigates lead information to identify associatedqualification information for the contact leads. The lead qualificationmodule accomplishes outbound activity by calling contacts in an effortto engage them in a discussion about the product and service, while alsodetermining/confirming their decision-maker role, their propensity topurchase and their desire to engage with a sales force. For example, thelead qualification module 20 promotes a product or service to a contactlead with outbound telephone calls to investigate the degree to which acontact has an interest in a product or service. The selected contactsfor this activity are based upon progress made nurturing the contacts.The combined information is captured and is then mapped to businessintelligence and output as a final comprehensive data report. Theenterprise historical database 22 receives information from the leadqualification module 20 to provide a historical basis from pastenterprise interactions and maps this data to a particular contact foruse in further determining qualification information. A leadconfirmation tool 24 interfaces with the combined output from the leadgeneration engine 18, the lead qualification module 20 and theenterprise historical database 22 to selectively analyze the leadinformation and qualification information to develop an ordered contactlist for the contact leads, the ordered list ranking contact leadquality in multiple quality categories. This tool creates profiles forcontacts that qualify the contacts for defined characteristics relativeto each other and summarize data associated with each contact. Thecontact lead quality categories are presented in a contact leadqualification graphical user interface 26. The contact profiles areperiodically reviewed to evaluate lead information quality and othercontact feedback so that a determination is made of whether contacts areready for approach by a sales team. Lead generation engine 18, leadqualification module 20 and lead processing tool 24 are, for example,instructions stored in a computer readable medium, such as memory in aninformation handling system, that execute on a processor to rank contactleads by quality categories, as set forth in greater detail with thefollowing flow diagrams. It also may include various softwarecomponents, such as a database or spreadsheet with algorithms. Finally,the lead can be input in a customer relationship management tool 27 forfurther follow up and final sale.

Referring now to FIG. 2, a flow diagram depicts a process for multiplecontact lead information sources going through the lead generationengine. The process starts with the generation of lead information fromwithin an enterprise 30, from organic sources 32 and/or from third-partymarketing vendors at step 34. At step 36, the lead information isaccumulated at a landing zone, such as a web site, for evaluation ofappropriate nurturing steps 38. Other leads from step 36 proceed to step40 for an evaluation of its unique core and behavioral characteristicsand to receive various stages of online nurturing. At step 40, valuesassociated with each lead are validated, and leads having insufficientvalues are returned to step 38 for further nurturing. Leads with valuesabove desired threshold values proceed to step 42 for preparation of alead generation report that summarizes known lead element values.

Referring now to FIG. 3, a flow diagram depicts a process for contactlead report to be introduced to a lead qualification module. From step44, selected leads are forwarded to step 46 for outbound leadinvestigation, such as with telemarketing contacts. At step 46,telephone calls or other types of outbound inquiries are initiated toinvestigate lead quality and generate additional customer recon/insight.At step 48, leads that lack a desired level of quality are returned tostep 44 for evaluation at the lead generation landing zone. Leads thatindicate a lack of interest in the product or service based upon theresults of the lead investigation end nurturing at step 50. Leads thathave greater than a threshold level of interest continue for salesevaluation starting at step 52. At step 52, good leads are output intoan investigative lead report that will be accessible by accountinganalytics and operational business intelligence for further evaluation.

Referring now to FIG. 4, a flow diagram depicts a process for contactlead qualification to undergo validation of characteristics by comparingthe data with an enterprise historical database. At step 56, each leadis analyzed based on lead generation information and lead qualificationinformation derived from outbound investigation to more precisely definelead characteristics quality. At step 58, the leads are analyzed toeliminate any duplicates. At step 60, the leads are mapped to existingand historical accounts to help evaluate the purchasing power of thelead, and the accounting analytics and operational business intelligencefor each lead are augmented per lead line item in the report. At step62, the leads are filtered into target segmentations, such as by thesize of an enterprise associated with a lead, the industry or theproduct or service of interest to the lead. At step 64, a comprehensivelead report is created that includes values of characteristics knownabout the lead, such as the quality of predetermined leadcharacteristics based on lead generation information, lead qualityinformation and historical business intelligence information. At step66, the lead report is provided to a marketing team for review withinthe Lead Confirmation Tool, which is step 72.

Referring now to FIG. 5, a flow diagram depicts a process for creating acontact lead profile presentation via a Lead Confirmation Tool havingintelligence for analyzing, cleansing and categorizing the data toensure data validity. At step 68, the marketing team receives theanalytics marketing report (the cumulative report including vendor,telemarketing, business intelligence) that summarizes desired qualitycharacteristics of each contact. At step 70, a check is made for reportcompleteness and data cleansing. This clean data is then imported intothe Lead Confirmation Tool 72. Throughout this process, there aremultiple Process Reviews 73 that determine process operation. At step72, data from the report is imported to a processing tool, such as adatabase using SQL code, for modeling lead quality characteristics. Atstep 74, values are assigned to non-quantitative or other key criteria.At step 76, the modeling tools calculation parameters are adjusted tothe newly assigned data values. At step 78, the modeling toolcalculation parameters are applied to categorize one or more elements ofthe lead's profile. At step 80, the data is normalized for comparisonpurposes across quality characteristics. At step 82, each lead profileis subjected to a comparison against threshold values for the normalizeddata, such as by ensuring two of three normalized values exceed adesired quality characteristic value threshold. At step 84, the data foreach lead profile is summarized with the normalized values and, at step88, a determination is made of whether the lead profile qualitycharacteristics exceed a threshold value in two of three qualitycharacteristics. For example, a determination is made of whether thelead fits into the parameters that have been decided on as being a goodquality lead for a particular marketing campaign. If not, the processcontinues to step 90 to return the lead for further nurturing andinvestigation and key learnings are derived. If yes, the processcontinues to step 92 for graphing of lead quality characteristics foreach lead profile in a common format that allows a ready comparisonbetween the various lead profiles. At step 94, additional informationand insights available for the lead profile are associated with the leadprofile so that a sales team member has sufficient information availableto have an educated conversation with a contact of the lead profile. Atstep 96, the lead profile is converted to an end user format, such as aPDF format, for use by a sales team. The lead profile creation processends at step 98, which is sales delivery, and the leads are forwarded tosales teams for action based on the relative lead qualitycharacteristics for each lead. As an alternative option, the lead maycycle between steps 92 and 96 as needed to update the lead profile untilit becomes a valid sales-ready lead and is accepted by the sales force,which at that point ends at step 98.

Referring now to FIG. 6, a contact lead qualification graphical userinterface (or “lead profile report”) is depicted. A lead qualitycharacteristic view 100 provides a graphical representation of leadquality for a contact lead with multiple quality characteristics 102. Inthe example embodiment depicted by FIG. 6, lead quality characteristicspresented include a readiness to engage characteristic, a pre-salesactivity characteristic and a demographic quality characteristic. Theoverall graphical values indicate a lead's relative maturity level,which is indicative of the likelihood that the lead will purchase aproduct or service associated with the lead quality characteristics,while also providing the sales force with an additional resource forpre-sales activity. In the example depicted by FIG. 6, demographicquality reflects the decision role of the contact, the budget of thecontact, the timeline within which to engage in a sales orproduct/service/solution implementation over which the contact hasexpressed interest in a product or service, inbound calls made by thecontact to the enterprise and outsourcing desires of the contact.Pre-sales activity includes an information download by the contact, timespent studying products or service of interest, promotions provided tothe contact, related assets owned by the contact, days in progress ofthe contact development, intimacy of the contact, client solutioninterest of the contact, and interest in available upgrades by thecontact. A contact's readiness to engage quality characteristic reflectscombinations of the demographic quality and pre-sales activity of thecontact and other elements that are associated with a desirablebehavior. The engagement information is collected and recorded to reportdata in a format that can be evaluated for feedback of the leadgeneration and confirmation process. In addition to the graphicalrepresentation of contact quality characteristics, a contact qualitycharacteristics graphical user interface presents contact information,such as a name and phone number, quality information gathered by humanor other interactions and a summary of sales activity, includingcustomer recon information with current and future opportunities andinsights. This solid system of lead qualification presents a consistentopportunity to deliver leads to sales.

Referring now to FIG. 7, this supplemental process flow depicts therelevance of the lead to a sales force and further qualifies the lead'ssales readiness quality. The Contact Lead Qualification GUI 98 iscreated and provided to sales for execution 104. A lead is accepted atthe sales program, assigned to a lead owner and assigned anidentification number for tracking. If at step 106 the sales persondetermines that this lead is qualified and ready for sales engagement,then it moves on to complete the sales program 110 and is entered intothe customer relationship management (CRM) tool 112. Contactqualification is applied by the sales owner as needed to optimize salesinteraction with the lead contact. Key learnings are derived from thisprocess. If the lead is determined to not be fully qualified to pass onto the sales force, then the process recycles and the lead continues inthe nurturing queue. If the sales person determines (step 106) that thelead is not ready for sales, then the lead may be determined to be a badlead and its path ends here (step 108) or it can go back into thenurturing process. The qualified leads are tagged with certain criteriathat enables them to be easily integrated with online customerrelationship management (CRM) tools that the sales forces utilizes. Whena lead is input in the CRM tool 112, it is assigned to a sales person114, the sales person updates activity information on the lead 116, andmarketing is able to track and follow up on the lead within this CRMtool 118. Marketing performs periodic reviews of the leads at step 120.Periodic review between marketing and sales programs of lead contactengagement results allows improvements in the lead qualitycharacteristics that further define contact actions. If the leads arestill determined to be bad or in need of nurturing, then they are cycledback into the process of step 108. Lead generation and confirmationinformation is updated based upon the outcome of engagements with thelead contact. Marketing maintains a centralized scorecard with resultsfrom the lead contact engagements, CRM tool and sales progress, such asfor use in evaluation and self-learning at the lead quality definitions.Based on the contact qualification and associated contact information,the lead contact is engaged as appropriate to optimize a desiredoutcome, such as a product or service sale.

In one example embodiment, lead information is generated by a contact'sresponse to an e-mail promotion or advertisement. Lead informationincludes inputs made by the contact that indicate an interest in aparticular product or service, such as a registration form filled out toobtain a white paper or view an educational webcast. Registrationinformation might include the contact's position in an enterprise, suchas a position in an enterprise's Information Technology department, andthe types of educational information downloaded by the contact. Forexample, a contact's interest in products and/or services may bediscerned from the subject matter or articles downloaded by the contactor webcasts watched by the contact. Nurturing methods may be applied tothe contact over time in order to attempt to better characterize thequality of the contact as a lead to a sale of a product or service. Forexample, an e-mail confirmation of the registration might includeadditional educational information of interest to the contact. Once anadequate amount of lead generation information is gathered to suggest anoutreach to the contact, confirmation of the contact as a lead for saleof a product or service though an outreach medium, such as a telephonecall by marketing representatives. Qualification information generatedby an investigation of the lead might include confirmation of thecontact's identity and an educated discussion with the contact basedupon the registration information and further investigation into thecontact's needs. This educated discussion is based on a communicationguide that directly ties into the backend lead confirmation tool and isstrategically designed to help enable the sales force. Based upon thelead information and the qualification information, qualitycharacteristics associated with the contact are computed for comparisonwith other leads in order to help guide the sales team in completion ofa sale. Evaluation of a lead's behavior with lead generation informationto assign a numerical value allows a comparison with other leads so thatoutbound marketing assets are used more efficiently in the investigationof the lead. Investigation of leads helps to determine the likelihoodthat a lead will result in a sale with a clear quality comparison ofdefined characteristics so that sales teams will have confidence in theleads provided to them. All of this pre-sales activity sets up thisinvention as a key part of doing more with less to enable the salesforce and drive revenue.

Although the present invention has been described in detail, it shouldbe understood that various changes, substitutions and alterations can bemade hereto without departing from the spirit and scope of the inventionas defined by the appended claims.

What is claimed is:
 1. A contact lead qualification graphical user interface comprising: a depiction of at least a portion of an ordered list of contact leads presented at a display, the depiction having contact information associated with each of the contact leads, the ordered list ranking contact lead quality in multiple lead quality categories; and a depiction of multiple lead quality category ratings for the contact leads presented at the display, each lead quality category rating associated with an indication of a contact lead characteristic.
 2. The contact lead qualification graphical user interface of claim 1 wherein the lead quality category ratings comprise a rating for activity of a contact lead relating to a product.
 3. The contact lead qualification graphical user interface of claim 1 wherein the lead quality categories comprise activities suggestive of interest in purchase of a product and readiness to engage with a sales force.
 4. The contact lead qualification graphical user interface of claim 1 wherein the lead quality categories comprise demographic quality information and pre-sales activity.
 5. The contact lead qualification graphical user interface of claim 1 wherein the contact leads comprise individuals targeted for purchasing an information handling system.
 6. A contact lead qualification graphical user interface comprising: a depiction of aggregated lead information for multiple contact leads, the aggregated lead information having selectively investigated lead information that identifies associated qualification information for the contact leads; wherein the lead information and qualification information are analyzed to present a depiction of at least a portion of an ordered contact list for the multiple contact leads, the ordered list ranking contact lead quality in multiple lead quality categories.
 7. The contact lead qualification graphical user interface of claim 6 wherein the contact leads are sorted by multiple lead quality categories.
 8. The contact lead qualification graphical user interface of claim 6 wherein the lead quality categories comprise activities suggestive of interest in purchase of a product.
 9. The contact lead qualification graphical user interface of claim 6 wherein the lead quality categories comprise demographic quality information.
 10. The contact lead qualification graphical user interface of claim 6 wherein the lead information comprises outreach by a contact to a predetermined marketing activity.
 11. The contact lead qualification graphical user interface of claim 6 wherein the contact leads comprise individuals target for purchasing information handling systems. 